August 06, 2007
monday morning without chickory
I have posted several pictures on my Flickr site. Take a moment to go there and see what you can see. For those unfamiliar with Flickr, there is a slideshow option in the set labeled "New Orleans."
I found a coffee shop toward the end of our stay. Community Coffee is pretty good. I wish that Cafe du Monde had been closer to Providence House. We stayed in a Southern Baptist seminary guest house/hotel thing. For our purposes, it was quite posh. There was a mini-fridge in each room. That was good. But there was only one microwave in the entire building. That made for some challenging cooking! Heh. It was great. The kids were amazing. And the time there was quite moving.
Okay...that's an understatement. Every morning on our way to the worksites, we drove through neighborhoods that are still in ruins. Trailers are everywhere. The painted markings from the search parties are still on many homes. Strip malls are empty. You have likely heard much of this on the news like I have. But there is something about actually seeing it all that shifted some stuff for me. That Mississippi is worse blows my mind. Speaking with one of the AmeriCorps volunteers, I learned that the government assumes that the recovery effort in Mississippi will take about twenty years. Twenty years to get the places there back to where they were before Katrina. Unreal. I don't know what the time frame is for New Orleans. I assume it will be a good long stretch.
There are trials ongoing to decide what insurance companies should be responsible for...and it does not seem like they are responsible for much. A storm surge is not a subset of flooding. Well, that's what the courts are saying. Incredible. I know that the industry could not have been prepared in any way for the massive damage and all the claims from the Gulf Coast. I get that. But what are these people supposed to do? Wealthy, poor, middle class...all of them are sunk entirely.
If you get a few days, volunteer down there. Send flowers to the people who live there. Send money. We volunteered with the St Bernard Project. There are other organizations down there if this group does not float your boat.
Posted by tripp at August 6, 2007 06:31 AM